


The New Year's Resolution

by Zauzat



Category: Star Trek
Genre: M/M, Post-Narada
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2012-10-26
Packaged: 2017-11-17 01:55:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zauzat/pseuds/Zauzat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christopher Pike has made a new year's resolution. He just can't work out how to keep it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The New Year's Resolution

Pike sipped at his cup of coffee while staring morosely at the beautiful view of the bay. The balcony and this view was one of the perks of an Admiralty apartment, one of the very few good things to come out of the previous year. He'd been so desperate to finally be done with the old year. He'd had some bad years in his many decades with Starfleet, and a few from his childhood too, but 2258 had to take the cake for awful. 

He'd been more than ready for 2259 to start, but that trouble was that once the partying and promises and frivolity were all over, the new year looked almost exactly like the old one had. Same old problems, same old limitations, same old same old, no damned escape from any of it. 

He stared grimly at the piece of paper he'd left out on his breakfast tray the night before. His one and only new year's resolution. He'd given up on such things years before. He was a disciplined, determined man and if he thought something should be done, he got on with it. He didn't need ridiculous rituals to kick-start him. Except apparently sometimes he did....

_Tell him how you feel._

Yes, well, it was all well and good to write it down like that. Work of a minute, that was. It was actually doing it that was hard. Because this was just too important to fuck up. Chris needed this friendship too badly to lose it by revealing an unfortunate gay infatuation.

He was in his fifties for heaven's sake. He was much too old to be nursing a gigantic crush. Too old for the pleasurable flutter he felt every time he saw _his_ name on a message header or caller ID. And too old to be this chicken-shit scared about declaring himself. Some days he thought he was right. Some days he caught a look in those sparkling eyes, a lift of a corner of that mobile mouth, and thought his feelings were returned. And some days when he was being shouted at as difficult and stubborn and damned well annoying, he was sure he was just another casualty of the events of 2258 that needed to be managed. 

He knew he had been cajoled along through all the tests and treatment and therapy, through all the PR appearances and Admiralty meetings and Federation shindigs, by a combination of orders and persuasion and flirting. He just didn't know how seriously he could take the flirting.

What was he supposed to say? So, I know you like me, but do you _like_ me, like me? Like me _that_ way? Ask Admiral Barnett to pass a note in class: _tick one, would you: fuck me? marry me? kill me to put me out of the misery of this unrequited obsession?_

For fuck's sake, he hadn't been that inept, even when he had been a teenage boy. He'd never had any trouble attracting bed partners. Once he'd gotten into his stride - and then got his hands on the captaincy of a fuck-off big ship - it had taken little more than a quirky grin and a lift of an eyebrow. And it wasn't that he'd only fucked people who didn't matter to him, although there had been a depressingly high number of those sort of encounters. There had been people he'd cared about, although looking back with the cynicism of age, he could see it had been mostly his pride he'd had to lose rather than his heart. 

If he was being honest with himself - and one thing the tough road of post-Narada therapy had taught him was that anything less than brutal honesty was a waste of everyone's time - he'd found physical release with a myriad of partners while finding respect and affection from his crews and channeling his slightly obsessive nature into his relationship with his ships.

But now the Enterprise was leaving without him, he no longer had a crew and a small corner of his mind was worried that this new infatuation was just another coping mechanism. Or some sort of emotional transference. Or a weird take on Stockholm Syndrome. Another part of his mind was telling himself how pathetic it was that he'd rather find some excuse based in psychological mumbo-jumbo than accept that he'd fallen in love for the first time in decades. And all he needed to do was man up and say something.

He put down the cold cup of coffee and buried his head in his hands. Say what? It was ridiculous. He was too old to be newly in love. People his age had grandchildren already. People his age were at the height of their careers, the names that led the Federation. People his age had their lives sorted out and if they'd missed out on the whole life partner thing, there was a reason for that. That was something young people did. Pretty people. Undamaged people...

He stood up abruptly and walked across to the balcony, trying to shake himself free of the downward spiral of negative thoughts. Think about _him_ instead. Why was this so much harder than with any of the alien princesses and foreign ambassadors and visiting academics that he'd satisfied himself with so effectively over the decades? That wasn't hard to answer. This was 30 years of friendship, a bone-deep knowing, the one voice that had kept him from falling into despair after the loss of Vulcan. This was one person he could not bear to disappoint, could not bear to lose. 

Thirty years! If there was any interest, he'd have had a sign by now. The whole thing was ridiculous. He needed to pull himself together and get over it. He mustn't do anything to risk the friendship. The thought of the embarrassed silence, the refusal humiliating in its gentleness, the awkward edge to their future meetings. It was intolerable.

And yet sometimes he wondered.... The look of pleasure when he walked into a room, the sotto-voce jokes that were just for him, the messages sent in the small hours of the morning. 

He plucked a flower from the window box, some kind of daisy, and began to pull the petals off one by one. _He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not..._ Could he be any more pathetic?

"Chris! Why are you mutilating that flower? Leave the poor thing alone. I'm sure it's never done anything to you. I let myself in, you don't mind, right? Look, I've brought pain au chocolat, fresh from that bakery on the corner, just the way you like them. Happy new year, by the way. You slunk out of the party early, you bastard. Didn't even say goodbye. What was that about?"

Chris shrugged awkwardly, trying to hide the flutter of pleasure at knowing he'd been missed. "I don't like what alcohol does to my sense of balance. I know the exo-skeleton can supposedly compensate but I'd rather stay in control. And those sort of parties aren't much fun sober."

That earned him a stern look that set off funny swirls of heat in his chest. "That's no reason to ditch your friends, though. So, what's this?" Chris's breath caught as the long-fingered hand that had just put down the bag from the bakery then picked up the piece of paper lying by his coffee cup. "New year's resolution? God, I gave up on those things decades ago. Never did do me a damned bit of good. So what is it then?"

Chris watched, suddenly at a complete loss for words, as the small piece of paper was turned over.

" _Tell him how you feel_?" He felt himself pinned by a piercing look, a long assessing stare. "Tell who? Any one I know?" After several breathless moments, Chris found himself pressed up against the balcony, another lean warm body suddenly deep into his personal space. "Can I help? Pass on a message? Ask him if he likes you _that way_?" That was an amused twinkle in the eyes now so close to his own, an easy curve to the generous lips that set Chris's pulse pounding. "Or shall I pass on a kiss on your behalf? I'd do that for you. I'd do just about anything for you, you know." That lovely mouth was just inches from Chris's own, he could feel the warm puffs of breath in the cold morning air. 

Chris suddenly realized that telling him was the wrong thing entirely. What he needed to do was shut him up. He pushed forward and caught those infuriating lips with his own, silenced the stream of teasing by slipping his tongue in between them, into warm silky depths. He was rewarded by a soft moan, by long arms tightening around him, by a firm thigh pressing between his legs.

"God yes! Chris, darling, what took you so fucking long?"

"You could've done something yourself!" retorted Chris, the snap of his words at odds with the soft kisses he was peppering along a lean cheekbone. 

"You were my patient. And if ever anyone was having a bad fucking year, it was you. You needed to make the move. I didn't want to impose."

Chris pulled back and looked into deep blue eyes, crinkled up with lines of laugher. "Impose all you want. As long as you want. Fuck, you drive me crazy."

Warm fingers stroked gently down Chris's cheek. "Right back attcha, you bastard. Happy new year, Chris. This year's going to be so very much better. I promise you that."

As Phil Boyce pulled him into another blazing kiss, Chris couldn't help but to believe him.

\- THE END -


End file.
